Crunch Hype

One of the biggest challenges for organizations in modern times is deciding where, when, and how to use the advances of technology, when the organizations are not technology companies themselves. Today, a startup out of Manchester, England, is announcing some funding for a platform that it believes can help. Peak AI, which has built technology […]

Epic Games has taken its fight against Apple’s App Store rules to the European Union where it’s lodged a complaint with the bloc’s antitrust regulators. In a blog post today the maker of the popular online game Fortnite said it’s extending its battle for what it dubbed “fairer digital platform practices for developers and consumers” […]

Enterprises have been loading more of their operations into cloud — and, more often than not, multi-cloud — environments over the last year, creating vast networks of services that can be complex to manage. Today, vArmour, a startup that provides ways to manage in real time and ultimately secure how applications (and people) work in […]

After raising $690 million from SoftBank in December to make acquisitions, the Sweden-based cloud communications company Sinch has followed through on its strategy in that department. Today the company announced that it is acquiring Inteliquent, an interconnection provider for voice communications in the U.S. currently owned by private equity firm GTCR, for $1.14 billion in […]

Dixa, the Danish customer support platform promising more personalised customer support, has acquired Melbourne-based “knowledge management” SaaS Elevio to bolster its product and technology offerings. The deal is said to be worth around $15 million, in a combination of cash and Dixa shares. This sees Elevio’s own VC investors exit, and Elevio’s founders and employees […]

Nate Faust has spent years in the e-commerce business — he was a vice president at Quidsi (which ran Diapers.com and Soap.com), co-founder and COO at Jet (acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion) and then a vice president at Walmart. Over time, he said it slowly dawned on him that it’s “crazy” that 25 years […]

Tens of thousands of students and professionals move out of India each year to pursue higher education and for work. Even after spending months in a new country, they struggle to get a credit card from local banks, and end up paying a premium to access a range of other financial services. Banks in the […]

A space startup connected to the International Space Station raises $130 million, Atlassian releases a new version of Trello and bitcoin briefly passes $50,000. This is your Daily Crunch for February 16, 2021. The big story: Axiom Space raises $130M Founded in 2016, Axiom Space is working with NASA to add privately developed space station […]

People who have spent time in jail or prison often face barriers to accessing stable jobs, housing and financial services. These types of barriers are a key driver of recidivism for the more than 600,000 people who are released from prison each year. Between 2005 and 2014, an estimated 68% of people released in 2005 […]

Reddit has published its transparency report for 2020, showing various numbers relating to removed content, government requests and other administrative actions. The largest problem by far — in terms of volume, anyway — is spam, which made up nearly all content taken down. Legal requests for content takedown and user information were far fewer, but […]

Toxic culture, deadly conspiracies and organized hate have exploded online in recent years. We’ll discuss how much responsibility social networks have in the rise of these phenomena and how to build healthy online communities that make society better, not worse at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice on March 3. Join us for a wide-ranging discussion with Rashad Robinson, […]

Reentering society after having been incarcerated by the criminal justice system can be daunting. Advances in technology and the continued, unchecked march of capitalism place obstacles in paths that can generally be difficult to overcome. Fortunately for these returning citizens there are a variety of programs and resources designed to help get them up to […]

Krisp, a startup that uses machine learning to remove background noise from audio in real time, has raised $9M as an extension of its $5M A round announced last summer. The extra money followed big traction in 2020 for the Armenian company, which grew its customers and revenue by more than an order of magnitude. […]

Efficient and cost-effective vaccine distribution remains one of the biggest challenges of 2021, so it’s no surprise that startup Notable Health wants to use their automation platform to help. Initially started to address the nearly $250 billion annual administrative costs in healthcare, Notable Health launched in 2017 to use automation to replace time-consuming and repetitive […]

TechCrunch is excited to announce that Zoom chief revenue officer (CRO) Ryan Azus is joining us at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 1. Azus has worked at Cisco, RingCentral and most recently Zoom. In his previous roles he held a number of sales titles, including his final role at RingCentral where he was its executive […]

If we are not careful, every entry of this column could consist of SPAC news.

Trello, the Kanban board-centric project management tool acquired by Atlassian in 2017, today launched what is likely one of its most important updates in recent years. With significantly more than 50 million users, Trello is one of the most popular project management tools around, and in many ways it brought digital Kanban boards to the […]

Talkshoplive is a startup that’s worked with stars like Paul McCartney and Garth Brooks, as well as small businesses, to host shopping-focused live videos. Today, it’s announcing that it has raised $3 million in seed funding from Spero Ventures. CEO Bryan Moore founded the company with his sister Tina in 2018. Moore previously led social media […]

Black founders need to own their resiliency and leverage the power that has resulted from their unique experiences.

Tackling the learning curve that comes with building a startup is not for the faint of heart. So many questions, so little time to search out reliable, actionable advice. Enter TechCrunch Early Stage 2021 — two distinct, virtual bootcamps designed specifically for early-stage founders and open to entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts. Budget-friendly tips: TC Early Stage […]

While companies have embraced the offerings of software-as-a-service companies with growing vigor, getting those new offerings to work in a seamless way from the outset isn’t so easy, with some business customers feeling forgotten as soon as the digital ink dries. Enter Onboard, a 10-month-old, startup that aims to help SaaS businesses delight those new […]

The creator movement has exploded in the last few years as platforms ranging from Substack to Clubhouse have made it easier than ever to reach an audience of willing readers and listeners. Yet the key to building sustainable creator businesses is the economics of these enterprises themselves. Get enough subscribers, and what often starts as […]

After working as a general manager for Uber in Nevada, Jason Radisson realized the need for a way to connect blue-collar workers to companies looking to employ them. So in late 2018, the idea for Shift One — a marketplace aimed at pairing workers and employers — was born. The startup is focused on last-mile […]

Knoq (formerly known as Polis) was a startup that recruited representatives to go door-to-door in their neighborhoods, talking up client products and services. So for obvious reasons, it faced challenges in 2020. “We stopped knocking on doors in February, and this summer, we were trying to figure out what the path forward was,” founder and […]

Metropolis is a new Los Angeles-based startup that’s looking to compete with BMW-owned ParkMobile for a slice of the automated parking lot management market. Upgrading ParkMobile’s license plate-based service with a computer vision based system that recognizes cars as they enter and leave garages has been Metropolis’ mission since founder and chief executive Alex Israel […]

One of the new space startups with the loftiest near-term goals has raised $130 million in a Series B round that demonstrates investor confidence in the scope of its ambitions: Axiom Space, which has been tapped by NASA to add privately-developed space station modules to the ISS, announced the new funding led by C5 Capital […]

This morning Citadel ID announced a combined $3.5 million raise for its income and employment verification service. The startup provides an API to customer companies, allowing them to rapidly verify details of consumer employment. The capital came from a blend of venture firms and angels. On the firm side, Abstract and Soma VC were in […]

A new breed of startups is acquiring and growing small but promising third-party merchants, and building out their own economies of scale. And while there are a number of such startups based in the U.S. and Europe, none had emerged in the Latin American market. Until now. Valoreo, a Mexico City-based acquirer of e-commerce businesses, […]

The hodl-crew are having quite the moment as bitcoin passed the $50,000 mark earlier today for the first time. Data pegs the peak at just over $50,500. The price of bitcoin, the world’s best-known cryptocurrency, has historically proven a reasonable proxy for consumer interest in the cryptocurrency space, and for trading activity amongst blockchain-based assets. […]

Pex, a startup aiming to giving rightsholders more control over how their content is used and reused online, has raised $57 million in new funding. The round comes from existing investors including Susa Ventures and Illuminate Ventures, as well as Tencent, Tencent Music Entertainment, the CueBall Group, NexGen Ventures Partners, Amaranthine and others. Founded in […]

Founded in late-2014, Salt Lake City-based Zencastr has become a kind of lifeline for many podcasters, as the pandemic pushed formerly in-person podcasts online. The startup is hardly a household name, but the company says it’s used by around 6% of all podcasts, based on an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million active shows in the […]

Titan, a startup that is building a retail investment management platform aimed at millennials, has closed on $12.5 million in a Series A round led by VC heavyweight General Catalyst. A bevy of other investors put money in the round, including Sound Ventures (actor Ashton Kutcher and Guy Oseary’s VC firm), Scribble VC, Y Combinator, […]

Shared electric moped startup Revel will start offering monthly electric bike subscriptions in New York, the second new business venture the company has announced in the past several weeks. Revel said Tuesday it was expanding its product line — which until the end of January consisted only of shared mopeds — to include monthly subscriptions […]

SpaceX has launched yet another batch of Starlink satellites – a full complement of 60, the standard size for its current Falcon 9-based Starlink missions. This brings SpaceX’s total to just around 1,000 in active on orbit, taking into account the handful that were experimental or have been de-orbited to date. This follows SpaceX’s opening […]

Vikrum Aiyer, the now-former vice president of global public policy and strategic communications at Postmates, penned a memo to his former colleagues and other stakeholders in the gig economy outlining what he thinks needs to happen next in the industry. In his letter, Aiyer says “it would be a mistake for us to think that […]

The Israeli startup Redefine Meat, which has developed a manufacturing process to make plant-based proteins that more closely resemble choice cuts of beef than the current crop of hamburger-adjacent offerings, has gotten a big vote of confidence from the investment arm of one of Asia’s premier food brands. The company has raised $29 million in […]

Indian conglomerate Tata Group has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in grocery delivery startup BigBasket, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The salt-to-software giant is buying over 60% stake in BigBasket, valuing the Indian startup between $1.8 billion to $2 billion, the source said, requesting anonymity as the deal is still […]

TikTok is facing a fresh round of regulatory complaints in Europe where consumer protection groups have filed a series of coordinated complaints alleging multiple breaches of EU law. The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) has lodged a complaint against the video sharing site with the European Commission and the bloc’s network of consumer protection authorities, while […]

Most small businesses, which form the backbone of an economy, today don’t have the resources to handle their IT needs. Take restaurants, for an example. They have likely outsourced this job to contract IT professionals to reduce expenses. Every time they need to buy a point-of-sale machine, a printer, new computers, or assign business emails to […]

The pandemic and the world’s big shift to doing (even) more online has put an unprecedented amount of pressure on cybersecurity. Now, it looks like one of the big public players in that space, Palo Alto Networks, has made an acquisition that will help it address that challenge, specifically with security tools designed for […]

Carl Pei, co-founder of OnePlus, knows a thing or two about communities. At the Chinese smartphone maker, Pei fielded product and feature ideas from fans and held frequent gatherings to hear their feedback. At his new venture, Nothing, Pei is going a step further. London-headquartered firm said on Tuesday it will allow its community to […]

Revent — a new European early stage (pre-seed to series A) venture capital fund with an ‘impact’ focus — is coming out of the gate today, and is poised to reach its target of a €50m ($60m) fund, with the first close of that already completed. Focusing on environmental and societal problems, Revent will be […]

Fronted, the London-based fintech aiming to make life easier for renters, including lending the cash needed for a deposit, has finally launched. In March, its founders took the decision to “hibernate” the nascent business after the first lockdown and with the pandemic taking hold. But, now with regulatory approval from the FCA and rents falling […]

Many countries hit hard by Covid-19 are beginning to see a glimmer of optimism from the arrival of vaccinations. Now, a promising travel startup that saw its growth arrested by the arrival and persistence of the pandemic is announcing a $97 million financing facility to help it stay the course until it can finally resume […]

Uncovered Fund, a VC firm targeting early-stage startups in Africa, announced today that it has launched its $15 million fund which is expected to close at the end of June this year. The Tokyo-based outfit founded by Takuma Terakubo in 2019 will invest $50,000 to $500,000 in African startups in seed and Series A stages. […]

From the chemical refineries that line the Gulf Coast to oilfields of West Texas, heavy industry has always been a big part of the economy in the Lone Star State. Now, as venture capital moves in to the state as part of an exodus from California, a new fund is combining Texas’ industrial past with […]

Parler returns from limbo, Uber lobbies Europe and we have more details about Notion’s outage. This is your Daily Crunch for February 15, 2021. The big story: Parler is back online The social network known for its far-right user base was dropped by infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services for posts advocating violence. Now it’s back […]

Growth talent wants to know that they have room to experiment, fail and iterate with the support and trust of their company.

Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, renowned early Twitter execs who served as the company’s CEO and its chief operating officer, respectively, have quietly closed a second venture fund just one-and-a-half years after disclosing they’d secured $135 million for a debut fund for their firm, 01 Advisors. According to an SEC filing, they wrapped up their […]

Nature’s Fynd, the food technology company with a new food offering cultivated from fungus found in the wilds of Yellowstone National Park, is releasing its first products for pre-order. Pitching both a non-dairy cream cheese and meatless breakfast patties, Nature’s Fynd had managed to attract some serious investors, including Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and […]